A look back: WordPerfect on DOS (2023)

I am becoming very nostalgic about word processors before around 2003. Back then, they were very predictable, made sense to me, and had all the features I wanted. The latest Word version makes all kinds of wacky choices for formatting, and I can't figure out how to fix them. Numbering is off, and formatting often is totally unpredictable. Not sure what's going on, but I really want Word 2000 back.

It's even worse than you expect!

Around 2000 i found that if you have document with header/footer with auto page numbers and merge it with few pages from other document also with page numbers you get huge mess in numbering.

Some weird happens like: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, (here is doc N:2) 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, (continues doc N:1) 7, 8, 9

And you can't just reset page numbers, because you need to be on inserted page and there to do reset.

I still have a Word 2000 installer CD with the original box and product activation key. Wow what a great word processor! Simple, fast, intuitive, and packed with cool features. Modern versions are not fundamentally different, but at the same time are bloated and obtuse. It just doesn’t have that old school snappy feel, that somehow used to feel more responsive and performant on FAR less capable hardware.